Stephen Downes

This is some good discussion from Gardner Campbell on the concept of scale in education (and, of course, we would extend that to technology in general). The inclination is to want to build to 'scale up' - that is, to support a massive number of people with a single system. That's what the xMOOC model of MOOCs tried to do. By contrast, our cMOOC model reached scale - on those occasions where it reach scale - by exploring network effects. This reflects the possibility of building to 'scale down'. Instead of looking at a mass audience, we're looking at personal connections, that can be as small as one-to-one. "I don't think colleges and universities really understand how to employ network effects," says Campbell. "And I don't think they've thought very hard about the way the web was designed: not as an information superhighway, but as 'small pieces loosely joined'."